


Head for the Bright Sun

by htbthomas



Category: The Americans (TV 2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Future Fic, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Reunions, Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 17:29:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1826347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/htbthomas/pseuds/htbthomas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the first few years, Paige couldn’t even think of Elizabeth without a red haze of anger coloring every memory. But as with everything, the passage of time has dulled the pain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Head for the Bright Sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [singsongsung](https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/gifts).



> Title from the Soviet song, [Katyusha](https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/sounds/lyrics/katyusha.htm). Diverges post-S2.
> 
> Thank you, Ghostcat, for all the great beta suggestions.

_2014_

Paige’s fingers grip the handle of her suitcase a little tighter as she steps off the escalator into the waiting area. It doesn’t really help with the nervousness, so she takes a long, slow breath in, then out. She tries to focus on little details to center herself, things like the neatly polished floor, or the television screens which flicker with images of a balding older man reporting the news, or people walking past in travelers clothing, some well-worn, some well-made. Several different languages swirl in the air around her, and try as she might, she can’t pick out any of them. She tried to learn Russian, at least a little, in the months since this trip was arranged, but the 15 hour flight has taken a toll.

She doesn’t know what to do while she waits. Should she sit or stand? Should she look for her name on a sign. Not her name, the name on her passport, the passport that allowed her to get into the country without anyone noticing. She decides to sit—on one of the many rows of black leatherette and chrome chairs.

What will her mother be like, after all of these years? Still as beautiful and distant as Paige remembers her, or frail and hardened? What has she done with her life here? Back “home,” as odd as that term seems to Paige. They haven’t spoken for nearly three decades, not after Elizabeth (or “Nadezhda,” she has to remember that) told Paige the truth and then disappeared, all in the same night.

For the first few years, Paige couldn’t even think of Elizabeth without a red haze of anger coloring every memory. Childhood images, even something as mundane as spaghetti around the dinner table, glow with residual suspicion. But as with everything, the passage of time has dulled the pain. Her own daughter is sleeping in her bed back in California, never knowing her grandmother was a KGB agent. If Paige has any say in the matter, she never will. Neither will her husband.

Paige scans the faces of her fellow travelers, even though she isn’t sure what to look for. She catches a cascade of flowing auburn curls, but when the woman turns, she is much too young. Paige shakes her head at herself. It’s been nearly thirty years—Elizabeth may look totally different, after all, as much a chameleon now as she was back then.

 

_1982_

Caroline leans back against the fence, kicking at a stone on the edge of the sidewalk. “I don’t think she’s coming.”

Paige’s heart sinks. It isn’t often that her parents let her stay the night with a friend. “Should we call?”

“How? The school office is closed.” Caroline lifts her backpack over her shoulder. “Let’s just walk. I have a key.”

Paige’s backpack feels suddenly very heavy. “Walk?” Flashes of memory cross her mind, the man leaning across his front seat to invite Paige and Henry into his car when their parents forgot them at the mall, the place out by the lake where he took them, the broken beer bottle in Henry’s hand... “How far is it?”

“I dunno.” Caroline shrugs. “Maybe five miles? I’ve done it before.” She smiles brightly, encouragingly. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

As long as they don’t accept any rides, it should be fine. “Okay.” Paige shoulders her backpack.

At the 7-Eleven, Caroline wants to get a Coke. “I think I have enough to split one. You in?”

Paige glances over at the payphone, where a woman is talking with her back to them. “Shouldn’t we try calling?”

Caroline shakes her head. “We’re gonna be there in another half an hour. What are you so worried about?”

Paige kicks at the curb, unwilling to say anything. They haven’t been friends long enough to share that story. She’s actually never told anyone at all about it. Not when it could make it back to her parents. “Nothing. Get the Coke.”

Caroline goes into the store, bells jingling as the glass swings inward. Paige doesn’t follow, though she doesn’t know why. Maybe she’s hoping that Caroline’s mom will see her standing in front of the store as she drives by looking for them.

The sound of the payphone receiver clacking back into its cradle causes Paige to turn. The woman faces the machine for a moment, rereading a slip of paper in her gloved hands, then sighs and adjusts her large-framed glasses. She faces Paige, and freezes. 

Paige almost has the same reaction. This woman—she seems so familiar, though Paige can’t place why. Short, dirty blonde hair, glasses, a trench coat over a flowered blouse and pencil skirt, with sensible wide heeled shoes. Paige is sure she’s never met the woman before. Paige squints, starts to open her mouth, and then the woman breaks eye contact, folds and places the paper into her purse. She walks toward Paige then, inclining her head.

The nod is slow, formal, and strikes Paige as odd in a way that doesn’t settle in until later when she recalls it. Paige lifts her hand to wave, gives the woman an awkward “Hi.” The woman passes by Paige with measured steps, gets into an unfamiliar sedan, and drives away. Though she doesn’t know why, she watches the car until it’s out of sight.

She finds herself drifting to the payphone then, picking up the receiver and pressing “0.” The operator comes on right away. “Collect call for 703-241-6820, please. Name is Paige Jennings.”

The receptionist at the travel agency picks up and accepts the call. “Paige, your parents aren’t here right now, they had a meeting with a client. Is everything okay?”

Paige frowns. “Yeah, no, everything’s fine. Do you know when they’ll be back?”

She’s hanging up just as Caroline comes back outside, mumbling, “Long line.” When she sees Paige at the payphone, she huffs in exasperation. “So you called?”

Paige screws up her face in apology. “My parents. They weren’t there, though.” 

Caroline shrugs, takes a long sip from the straw and passes the cup over.

They’re walking up the drive to Caroline’s house when the face of the woman at the payphone swims before her eyes again and Paige realizes, “Oh my god, she could be her sister.” 

Caroline stops, keys halfway out of her pocket. “What?”

“Never mind, nothing.” Paige puts the thought out of her mind but it haunts her dreams for months afterward. She never mentions it to her mother at all.

 

_2014_

Paige is awakened from her reverie by a touch on the shoulder. She jumps, a cloak of those feelings of unease still resting on her spirit.

“Excuse me,” a man says beside her, his English good but faintly accented. He’s tall, thin, his brown hair wavy but well-groomed, maybe in his late twenties. His suit is clean but inexpensive. “I did not mean to startle you.” 

“No, it’s fine,” she says, willing herself back to the present. “Can I help you?”

“Are you Ms. Paige?” 

Looking up in to his face, she feels a tingle of recognition, but she can’t imagine where they would have met. “Yes, I’m Paige,” she answers instead. Is there something wrong? Why didn’t Elizabeth come to pick her up herself?

“I am Sergei. I am here to drive you to m… to Nadezhda.” He gestures to her bags. “May I?”

She doesn’t move. “Is everything all right?”

“Nadezhda is not fond of public places. She asked me to accompany you to her house.”

Paige nods, standing. “Are you her driver?”

“No.” He hesitates. Then he straightens up, the set of his shoulders stunning her with its familiarity, and looks her in the eye. “I am her son.”

 

_1984_

The summer the Olympics are held in Los Angeles, Paige and Henry camp out on the couch. She can’t remember if she watched the ones when she was eight years old. The last Olympics were barely on the news at all. This one has so much coverage, all day long, so it really feels like the first time. Henry’s almost as obsessed with it as the Nintendo their dad relented and bought last Christmas.

Their dad sits with them sometimes, especially during the field hockey matches, watching and commenting every once in a while. He cheers with them when the United States wins a medal, which happens a lot in the other events.

“It’s only because the Games are here,” her mother says from the kitchen, tossing the salad for dinner. She never watches with them, when she’s home at all. “The judges are biased.” 

“That’s probably true,” Paige agrees. “Didn’t the Russians win the most at the last one in Moscow?”

Her mother pauses and turns toward her, an small, unreadable smile on her face. “Yes. They did.”

“Yeah,” Henry pipes up. “But Joey says that we’d _totally_ kick the stupid Russians asses if they came.”

“Henry!” Her father chides him. “Language.” Her mother just presses her lips together and goes back to tossing the salad.

“It’s kinda fair, though,” Paige argues. “We boycotted them, so they’re boycotting us. A mini-Cold War.”

Henry slumps down. “Still stupid.”

“Russian teams are known for their discipline and perseverance. It might be tougher to win those medals than you’d think.” Her father pats Henry on the shoulder. “We’ll see what happens at the next one.” 

An American touches the wall first in the freestyle swimming event they’re watching, and Henry’s loud cheers interrupt the discussion. Paige just watches quietly.

Her mother lets her pick the dessert that night.

 

_2014_

Sergei and Paige spend most of the car ride in silence, Paige trying to work through her shock as the unfamiliar landscape rushes past. She finds herself fixating on the molded plastic of the air vents, the freshly vacuumed car mats, though the car seems far from new. He must have wanted to make a good impression on her, or her mother did. But the facts still echo in Paige’s mind. Sergei is Eliz—Nadezhda’s son. She supposes it has to be possible. Her mother was still in her forties when she left them. But why?

Was it because she was so ashamed of her children in the US—the ones in her arranged marriage—that she needed to try again to get the perfect son? Trade her fake marriage and fake kids for a real marriage with a real son? Or... Another tiny shock ripples through her. Is he the reason she left? 

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Paige asks, the first words either of them have said in long minutes.

“No,” he says immediately, keeping his eyes on the road. 

“Oh.” She looks back out at the road herself. The streets are more well-kept than she would have assumed, the trees are green and lush, the sky is bluer, even the air is not as _cold_. 

“Except…” he says after a time. “For you and your brother, of course.”

“Of course.” It’s strange in to think about this whole other world that she has unknown ties to. She presses, “Your father?”

“I—” Sergei begins to answer, then looks away. “I never knew him.”

“Oh,” she says again. She's too afraid to ask his age, to prove her theory. She hesitates before asking, “So… is Nadezhda married?”

He glances toward her then, his eyebrows drawing together in an expression so much like her mother that she nearly stops breathing. Then he says, “She never remarried. It’s just the two of us.”

Paige isn’t sure what to make of that. It could mean anything. Maybe she shouldn’t read into it at all. But she wants to know now, she wants to know everything. She should have tried to find out years ago. With age comes both experience and regret.

She takes a deep breath, formulating her next question. But he speaks before she can, “She missed you, too.”

 

_1986_

Paige can’t move. She wants to, wants to swipe the suitcases off the bed with an angry shout. But her mother continues to place clothes inside them as she talks. 

“...can do so much more good back at home than here. That’s why I have to go, Paige.”

She can’t talk either. The last words she would have ever expected her mother to say are still ringing in her ears, “I am a KGB agent.” The rest are so much roaring water rocking the life raft she’s barely clinging to.

But when a series of wigs goes into the suitcase, including a short dirty blonde one, Paige snaps. “You’ve been lying to us, all this time! Does Henry know, does _Dad_ even know?”

Her mother pauses in her packing, and looks up at Paige. “Your father and I met when we were assigned together in 1962. He’s out on a mission right now.”

Somehow that painful knowledge releases the rest of her inertia. She stands, fists clenched. “Does he know you’re leaving?”

She looks away and puts another item in the suitcase. “No.”

“No? But why—!”

“He and I used the share the same passion for our mission,” her mother answers, cutting Paige off. “We haven’t for a while now.”

Paige comes around the bed to get closer. “Is that all it’s ever been? A mission? Did you ever love him?” The lines around her mother’s eyes tighten and her gaze turns unreadable. Paige continues, voice breaking, “Did you ever love us?!”

“Oh, Paige…” She places her hands on Paige’s shoulders. “I love you so much. You have to believe me.”

“But you’re leaving.”

She simply nods.

Paige tries to appeal with logic, a last ditch effort. “What about _glasnost_?” She trips over the word a little, even though they talked about it a lot in government class this year. “ _Perestroika_?”

“ _Perestroika_.” Her mother’s face screws up and she almost spits the word. “Is a cancer that must be cut out. That’s why I have to go back.” 

The venom in her voice makes Paige step backward, out of her mother’s grasp. “And that’s more important.”

“Sometimes the greater good is more important than _everything_.” She shakes her head a little, adding, “I know you can’t understand, growing up here. I once thought you could. Maybe if you just had the right friends, the right training… but your father would hear none of it.” She zips up the final suitcase and slides it to rest on the floor.

“You…” Her head spins. “You wanted me to become a spy, too?”

“You still could. Come with me, Paige. Let me show you the motherland, show you her beauty, her people… what I fight for…”

Her mother takes a step toward Paige, tears shining in her eyes. She reaches a hand out to stroke Paige’s jaw with a tenderness that Paige can’t accept.

She knocks the hand away.

 

_2014_

Paige swallows against the pain of the memory. The pain always feels so fresh when she lets herself think about that night. Her father had come home to find her on the couch, tear ducts dry from hours of crying. When she’d finally gotten out the full story, he’d simply kissed the top of her head and gone into his bedroom. He didn’t come out for two days.

Philip was back to his old self by the time Henry, who’d been away at a camp, came back home. The two of them comforted Henry as best they could, but they had no explanations to give. Without ever discussing it, they kept Henry in the dark. As far as Paige knows, he’s never learned the truth.

Paige made a point over the next five years to ignore the developments in the USSR. She had college and dating and figuring out what to do with her life keeping her busy anyway. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was too big for even Paige to ignore. An hour after seeing the news on TV, she found herself at a bar, drinking until she couldn’t feel anything anymore. When she woke up in David’s bed the next morning, she felt nothing, not sadness for her mother, not any sense of vindication. Just nothing. Curled against him, Paige went back to sleep, dreaming of her future instead of her past.

Philip went on with his travel agency well past the end of the KGB, only retiring when online travel booking made his business mostly obsolete. Paige never asked him why he stayed in the US. Did he remain a spy? Did he defect? Did everything just fall apart, leaving him stranded? Whatever took place, she’s grateful the truth never came out, that she could hold onto to the illusion that what their family once had was real. He still lives in Falls Church, near Henry and his family, his garage occupied with a classic car in some stage of restoration or other. She doesn’t know a thing about cars, but she loves to watch his face as he runs a hand over the finish, telling her about the latest project. 

Paige got the email out of nowhere one morning at breakfast. All it said was: “Come see me. Love, Elizabeth” with contact information for an intermediary. She blinked a few times, turned the phone screen off and looked over at her daughter Sharon, texting one of her friends before school. By the time Sharon was on the bus, Paige had made the call.

“We’re here,” Sergei says. He pulls up to a building among many others, five or six stories high. “Follow me, please,” he tells her, carrying her bag and walking up a flight of stairs.

Inside, the building looks like any apartment building in a large city—white walls, wooden paneling, concrete stairs. It’s well-kept but not luxurious. Is this the life of a former hero of the KGB? Or just a woman in her retirement?

The door Sergei stops in front of is not marked with a name, just a number. He turns the key in the lock and knocks at the same time. “Mamochka?”

“Come,” Paige hears from inside, the tone clear and strong. Sergei opens the door wider, stepping aside so Paige can enter.

Paige closes her eyes and swallows before taking that final step inside, all her pent up nervousness and worry flowing through her with a great rush of adrenaline. But it’s only a moment. She’s come this far, and she’s never been a coward.

Paige’s eyes are drawn to the figure on the sofa immediately. Nadezhda—no, Elizabeth. she just can’t use the other name in her mind—sits straight-backed and proud, her hair pulled into a loose bun at her neck. The hair is greying from its earlier rich auburn, but is not the white shock of receding curls her father now sports. She doesn’t speak.

Paige takes another step into the room, folding her hands in front of her as if she is addressing a judging panel. It’s not so different from the way she often felt as a teenager. She forgets all of the Russian she has memorized in the last six months and says, “Hello, Mother.”

“Hello, Paige.” Not ‘sweetheart’ or ‘honey’, just her name. “Are you well?” Elizabeth’s English is still good, though it sounds like it might be a little rusty.

“Yes. And you?” It feels so formal, as if they have always been strangers, not just for the past thirty-some years.

“As well as can be expected.”

Paige’s nerves come back. This is what she had secretly feared, though it rarely came bubbling to the surface. Why reach out to her now? There must be something terribly wrong, cancer, or heart disease, or some unnamed wasting sickness. Paige pulls her hair over her shoulder, and grips it in a loose fist. “Why is that?”

Suddenly Elizabeth smiles. “Come rest your feet. You must be tired after your journey.” She pats the empty cushion beside her. Paige glances at a chair beside the sofa and takes it instead, still not fully trusting the nature of this visit. Elizabeth watches her and nods serenely. She turns to Sergei and speaks to him in Russian. Paige only catches ‘chay.’ She turns back to Paige. “How is your family? David? Sharon?”

Paige isn’t surprised that her mother knows their names, but she can’t allow the subject to change. “Are you okay? Sick? In trouble with your government?”

“Paige, I’m fine. But I am...” She smiles, and Paige can’t remember one so genuine. “...73. Time takes its toll.”

“So then, why—” Sergei returns then with the tea, and she thanks him, but holds it between her hands, not taking a sip. “Why did you ask me to come?” Sergei sits on the other side of his mother—their mother—seemingly as interested in the answer as Paige is.

Elizabeth does take a sip, a long, slow one, before she speaks again. “I wasn’t sure you would come at all. I hoped you would.”

“Dammit, Elizabeth!” she cries, all the pent-up exhaustion, frustration and nervousness exploding from her. The tea splashes over onto her fingers, but she lets the pain keep her centered. “Stop talking circles around the subject! I’m not a mark, not an asset! I’m your daughter!”

Elizabeth remains completely passive during her tirade, only glancing with concern at Paige’s now burned fingers. The words don’t seem to affect her at all. 

“Mom…” It comes out like a choked sob.

“You’re 46.”

Elizabeth lets the words hang there, as if they are an answer in themselves.

“What?” Paige blinks a couple of times, then sets the tea aside. “What does that have to do with—”

Suddenly she knows. 

“You were 46. When you left.”

Elizabeth nods. “And I have to know, did I do the right thing? Have you lived the life you wanted?” 

The question stuns her. How can Elizabeth ask that when she gave up every right to know thirty years ago? “The best I could, without a mother to lean on! Dad did his best, but it wasn’t the same. He was never the same without you.”

Elizabeth looks down for a moment, her fingers tracing the edge of her teacup. “But you followed your dreams? Loved someone deeply?”

Paige blinks in confusion. The Elizabeth she knew would have shouted right back at her, defended her actions point-by-point. So she’s stunned enough to answer truthfully. “Yes. To both.”

Elizabeth sighs and relaxes into the cushions of the sofa. “Good. Then I did the right thing.” She sees Paige’s look of devastation, and continues, “If I had stayed, I would only have tried to mold you into the image of what I thought was the perfect daughter. But you would have broken first.”

“What…?” A tear leaks down her cheek, unasked for. 

“You were so strong. You _are_ so strong. But so _American_. I thought that if I had done things differently, or if Philip wasn’t around, or were here in my homeland…”

Paige glances over at her baby brother, his heart in his eyes as he watches his mother. “So you decided Sergei would be different.”

Elizabeth shakes her head and chuckles. “But Sergei is Sergei, not who I forced him to be.” She reaches over and squeezes his hand. “Children are never who you expect them to be, no matter what you do.”

Paige laughs despite herself. “I learned that the first time Sharon stayed out past dark.”

“Then,” Elizabeth says, reaching her other hand out to grasp Paige’s, “you learned it much sooner than I did.”

 

_2018_

Sergei’s palm is sweaty in hers, and he keeps shifting it around. She squeezes it. Her husband David—more worthy of her trust than she ever would have given him credit for—gives Sergei an encouraging pat. Paige nods toward the man standing in the waiting area outside the gate at Dulles. “Here we go.”

Philip turns when she taps him on the shoulder. He envelops her in a warm hug, whispering into her hair, “Welcome home.” He pulls back to give David a handshake, his eyebrows rising politely at the unfamiliar man beside them. “Who’s this?”

“Dad, this…” Paige can see that recognition is blossoming in her father’s eyes even as she is finishing the introduction. “...is Sergei.”


End file.
